Equal Voice & Elections Canada Lunch & Learn 2: Childcare and Accessibility Expenses

  

15 Best Practices to Make Your Election Campaign Accessible

1. Know Your Team. Account for yours, your campaign team member's and volunteer’s accessibility and dietary needs.
   
   Ask your key team members about this at the very first meeting. If possible, make sure that you ask about accessibility on your campaign volunteer forms, on top of their preferred volunteer activities.
   
   
   
2. Accessible Headquarters. Especially in rural areas, it can be hard to find fully accessible, affordable, suitable, short term rental space for campaign headquarters – you can only work within what is available. But if it’s possible, always try to find the most physically accessible space you can.
   
   - Is there an automatic button at the entry?
   - Is there a lip or steps between the outside and front door entry? 
   - Is the entry wide enough for larger wheelchairs?
   - Is the bathroom accessible?
   - Is parking easy and are there accessible spaces?
   - Can someone with a mobility aid easily do turn around in your headquarters without getting stuck?
   
   It helps to include accessibility information (What is and isn't accessible) about your headquarters on your contact page, under the address. It saves people with disabilities time having to call and ask if they can enter the headquarters.
    
    
3. Accessible Venue Spaces. If you are renting venues for events, make sure to get a list of accessibility features from the venue. It also helps to list the nearest station or bus stops near that event.
    
    
4. Meet community members where they are. If a prospective voter wants to talk to the candidate and they can’t enter your headquarters because it’s not accessible, how can the candidate go to them? The candidate should make a point to knock on that person’s door.
   
   
   Visit seniors homes, long-term care facilities, post-secondary disabilities offices, and different disability-related nonprofits in your area. Promote the public places, events and festivals you attend and welcome people to come and say hello to you.
    
    
5. Accessible Campaign Materials. Avoid making your campaign materials too overwhelming - you do not have to list everything about yourself on this one document! Election materials should give the most important information you want the public to know about your suitability for the job. It should make people want to reach out to you or to check out your website and learn more.
    
   Essentially, you have between the door and the recycling bin to catch their interest. A wordy pamphlet will be to your disadvantage. Research shows the brain prefers shorter lines - between 50-75 characters. A shorter line encourages people to read the entire page. This goes for your website as well. Balance your text with image content and play with white space so it does not look too cluttered.  
   
   Avoid jargon or larger words. Big words don’t get you elected; big ideas do. If anything, big words may make you look more unrelatable.
   
   It also helps to have a small number of materials with larger text and consider having a handful of braille materials on hand.
    
    
6. Be aware of the languages spoken in your area. If possible, translate your campaign materials so you can connect with those communities as well. 
    
    
7. Keep colour contrast in mind with your election signs, materials, social media posts and your website.  Good colour contrasting means viewers can see your content, no matter the device they use or the lighting of their surroundings. If you’re unsure if your colours are contrasting well, there are a ton of free colour contrast testers online like this one.
    
    
8. Text on your PDF online materials and website should be able to be highlighted by your mouse. Don't save your PDFs as a flattened PDF. If you can highlight the words on the PDF, then that means a screen reader will be able to grab the words to read it out loud.
    
   When it comes to your website, try to have all the text on the site itself, rather than on a pre-created, uploaded image. This not only helps assistive technology, but also benefits your search engine optimization.
    
    
9. When you are making social media posts, add alt text descriptions or an image description to the bottom of your caption. This provides context of the image’s purpose to the reader. This is especially important for individuals who use screen readers and other assistive technologies.
    
    
10. It is best practice to provide closed captioning on your video content.
     
     
11. If you use hashtags, capitalize each word. #HashtagLikeThis, #notlikethis. Without capitalized letters, the hashtag will come out as gibberish if someone is using a screen reader, or may be more easily misinterpreted.
    
    
     
12. Avoid using too many emoticons in your posts. If you list 12 hearts in a row, a screen reader will say “heart emoticon” 12 times in a row. That might annoy your prospective supporter.
    
    
    
13. When using online conferencing tools like Zoom, buy the plans with live closed captioning and live language translation - especially if you are in more remote areas or in a place where there are many languages spoken.
     
     
14. Avoid posting long links on print materials. There are a ton of free link shortener and QR code generator programs online. Some canvassers will have lanyards with a QR code that links straight to the candidate's website, for prospective voters to scan during the conversation.
     
     
15. Utilize Elections Canada resources as a way to educate voters about the supports available to them on Election Day. You can even do a social media post around it on your campaign page! There are tons of services that can be requested for voters in advance and available as needed. Learn more here.

Want to learn more about Elections Canada childcare/accessibility expenses?

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